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This recent season, I found myself navigating in gridlocked traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my companion in the front seat advised a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and overheated, I followed the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a roadwork site.

A seemingly trivial event, perhaps. But one that encapsulates a defining dilemma of our era, where technology permeates nearly every facet of existence: who gets our trust to a greater degree – fellow humans and our personal instincts, or the algorithm?

A Call for Intellectual Maturity and A Contemporary Backslide

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he wrote, "represents the incapacity to use one's own understanding without direction from another." For ages, that directing force for society was often the clergyman, the king, or the feudal lord – entities purporting to speak for divine will. To explain phenomena like changing seasons, people looked for explanations in theology. In shaping the social world, from commerce to matters of the heart, religious doctrine served as the primary guide.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant argued that humans had the capacity for reason. They just didn't have the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in the 18th century, a new dawn emerged: logic would replace blind faith, and the intellect, liberated from dogma, would become the driver of progress and a more ethical world.

Now, 250 years later, one might question if we are slipping back into a form of intellectual immaturity. An app dictating a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence risks becoming our new "other" – a unseen guide that steers our decisions and actions. We are in danger of ceding the historically earned courage to reason for ourselves – and this time, not to gods or kings, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Subtle Dangers of Algorithmic Reliance

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and already a global survey found that an overwhelming majority of respondents had engaged with artificial intelligence in the previous six months. Whether contemplating a breakup or selecting a vote, individuals are increasingly turning to algorithms for counsel. Research suggests a large majority of user prompts concern non-work topics. Even more intriguing than our use of AI for judgment is what occurs when we let it speak for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for tools like ChatGPT, just behind practical requests. The late American author Joan Didion famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” What occurs when we cease writing? Do we lose that path?

Alarmingly, some evidence suggests the answer may be yes. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to track the mental engagement of participants who had could use AI, traditional search engines, or nothing. Those who could use AI showed the lowest cognitive engagement and had trouble accurately recalling their own work. Maybe most concerning was that over time, individuals in the AI group grew progressively lazier, copying large sections of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Of course, AI's attraction lies in its efficiency. It is fast, reduces effort and – critically – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be partly explained by a preference to surrender autonomy in for the sake of the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a digital avenue for relinquishing the burden of having to think and choose.

The Opacity Dilemma: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things beyond our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Sitting in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to believe the machine over my friend (a choice she took as an insult). With access to real-time information, surely the app must know best – or so I thought.

The fundamental problem is that AI is a black box. It produces answers, but not always fostering human comprehension. We do not truly know the process behind its decisions – including its creators acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we check its reasoning against transparent standards. So when we heed AI's recommendation, we are not being guided by reason. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, trust the machine – that could be our future guiding principle.

Using Without Losing: The Essential Challenge

AI can be a powerful tool for mankind in rational inquiry. It can aid in medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle administrative chores – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. This is beneficial. But Kant and his contemporaries did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not just about productivity – it was a practice of liberty and human emancipation.

Human thought is inherently messy and error-prone, but it compels us to debate, to question, to test ideas – and to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. It builds self-reliance, both individually and as a society. For Kant, the use of reason was never only about information; it was about enabling people to become authors of their own lives, and to oppose domination. It was about creating a ethical society based on the common foundation of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the key question remains: how can we leverage its promise of superhuman intelligence without undermining human rationality, the cornerstone of the Enlightenment and of free societies themselves? That is likely one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to delegate to the algorithm.